About this collection

The Schnull-Mueller-Vonnegut Family Collection combines the photograph collections of three prominent Indianapolis families of German heritage. The family photographs portray life in Indianapolis and summers at Lake Maxinkuckee in Culver in the early 1900s. Other locales represented in the photographs include Brown County, Ohio River towns, DePauw University and Harvard University. Family patriarch Henry Schnull (1833–1905) immigrated to Indianapolis from Germany in 1852. He became a successful wholesale grocer and banker, as well as one of the originators of Das Deutsche Haus (The Athenaeum). The marriages of his three daughters linked the Schnull family with the Vonnegut and Mueller families of Indianapolis. Schnull's daughters Emma and Nannie married brothers Clemens (Jr.) and Bernard Vonnegut of Vonnegut Hardware and Vonnegut & Bohn architects. His third daughter Julia married J. George Mueller of Mooney-Mueller Drug Company.